Tempering Hot Summer Days with the Cool Hand of Big Data

We all know the feeling of walking into an air-conditioned office building on a hot summer’s day. It’s 94º outside. It’s 64º inside. Suddenly, you need a knit sweater just to sit at your desk. (I know someone who used to bring a space heater to work — in August.) Aside from being uncomfortable, this is horrifically inefficient. The low hum of the air conditioner is the sound of coal being burned and money being spent to make you miserable at work. BuildingIQ is trying to change that. Their weapon of choice? Machine Learning. The company has developed cloud-based software that gathers information about a building and uses it to build a thermal model. That model can predict how much or how little energy is needed to keep the building’s occupants comfortable…